“Well, if I don’t protest openly at least I won’t lift a finger to help the system. Anyway, it’ll only be a matter of time before I start to drink again and that’ll lead me straight back to the LTP. I’m going south to pick up casual work. In the countryside I’ll be free to do more or less as I like. Country people stick more closely to the old ways.”
VV turns to Sanka: “So Vanya is going to become a Wanderer.[29] Perhaps you think our beloved Comrade Brezhnev is the Antichrist?”
“The very same.”
“And our Founder and Teacher, Comrade Lenin?”
“The Father of Lies,”
“The Communist Party of the USSR?”
“The vessel of Satan.”
“And all who submit to its authority?”
“Devil’s spawn!”
“But this is not the nineteenth century,” VV points out. “Our Russian people don’t support vagabonds and holy fools with the generosity of bygone years. How are you going to live?”
“I’ll register with a collective farm. No one expects you to work there. The farm will give me a bed and food and my time will be my own. Whenever I get sick of it I can take to the road, if the police pick me up my papers will say I’m a collective farm worker. Vassya-Honeycake told me there are plenty of farms in the Kuban eager to take people on.”
VV bursts out laughing: “All over the USSR peasants are busting a gut trying to leave the farm. You only find old women, drunks and mental defectives there now, and you want to run away to a collective farm!”
“There’s nothing left for me here. I no longer have a family. These days I’m responsible to no one.”
“But you can’t run away from yourself,” says VV.
“I’m not trying to. All I want to do is get away from everyone who knows me. Especially my mother.”
I have sworn never to return home to my parents. While I was inside I learned that my younger brother Sashka died after drinking tainted samogon on New Year’s Eve. He came home and fell into a coma in front of my mother and stepfather who were both too drunk to notice their son’s condition. By the time they sobered up it was too late to call an ambulance. Perhaps no hospital could have saved him; all the same I blame my parents for Sashka’s death.
VV and I are released together. We got on well in jail but on the outside our differences begin to show. No doubt his important mother will find him some easy work — and no doubt he’ll soon start taking pills again. Still, he lends me money for a ticket to Sochi.
Before I leave Toliatti I go back to Barkovka to meet Sanka on his release day. I know no one else will come for him so I bring a coat and some clothing to spare him the shame of going home in a prison jacket. Sanka’s family live not far from the hostel where I’m staying. He invites me up to meet them.
A heavily pregnant woman opens the door. Fat rolls from her neck to her knees. She squints hard at us for a minute and then throws her arms around Sanka: “Tolik! You’re home. Oi! Grish… get a bottle, our lad’s back.”
Inside the flat youths and girls in various states of drunkenness are draped over chairs and boxes. A few of them turn indifferently to stare at us. Sanka’s Heroine Mother waddles up to a comatose man and punches her huge fist into his ear. “Grish, I said wake up you prick-for-legs. Our Misha’s back. Give him a drink.”
I fear that Sanka will not enjoy the taste of freedom for long.
I take a train to Sochi and spend a few weeks wandering along the Black Sea coast, picking up odd jobs. I fall in with other tramps who help me to find places to sleep. We prefer the warmth and companionship of railway stations but the police come round continually waking us up. Sometimes we sleep on stationary trains in sidings but local youths barge through the carriages, taking money off those too drunk to resist.
An older tramp shows me how to make some money by standing in the ticket queue for the Sochi hydrofoil and selling my place to latecomers. This man thinks I’m really wet behind the ears, although I’ve been a Decembrist and a zek. “How can you reach the age of 35 and not know what a spets[30] is? They have them in all big cities and railway stations. If you get picked up without documents they throw you in for 30 days while they cook up something really incriminating against you. Three times in the spets earns you a year in camp.”
I nearly fall victim to this law in the town of Tuapse. A policeman scrutinizes my passport, decides he doesn’t like my face and tears up my document under my nose. Then he arrests me for travelling without a passport. At the police station I try to explain what their colleague has done. They laugh and slap my face a few times. Fortunately they are too lazy to do the necessary paperwork to give me 30 days. Probably they’ve exceeded their quota of tramps in jail that month.
I have 24 hours to leave town. From Tuapse I board the steamer Admiral Nakhimov and sit in the buffet completely indifferent to whether it is taking me north or south. It docks at Novorossisk where I earn a few roubles by carrying boxes of flowers from the pier to taxis. Having money in my pocket at the beginning of the day buys me a breakfast of beer fortified with essence of dandelion. At night I sleep among the feet of giant sailors hurling grenades and charging fascists with bayonets. It might be a Hero City, but its monuments are very draughty.
The town of Novorossisk is the most important oil terminus in the USSR. Vessels from all over the world dock here. I stick to the local port as I know the foreign quays are crawling with plain-clothes police.
A young lad approaches me at a beer-stall, saying he has some business to discuss. Something about him makes me suspicious. Before I have a chance to walk away a police car pulls up and takes me to the spets. My appearance must have given me away.
The spets is a row of cells in the courtyard of the town police station. Eight to ten men are crammed into each stuffy cell. We spend our days playing draughts with bread counters and brewing chefir. A skilled chefirist needs only four sheets of newspaper to kindle a fire that will brew a litre. We have to keep the smoke to a minimum in order not to give ourselves away.
Amongst the guards are a pair of Adyghe twins who are much more humane than the rest. They give me some cardboard with which I make chess pieces. One of them suggests a game but he plays badly and I win with ease. One of my cell-mates whispers: “Idiot — maybe you should try to lose.”
And so I do. It puts the Adyghe in such a good mood he later throws two loaves of bread into the cell. The next day he gives me a mugful of samogon.
That afternoon my chess game is interrupted by shrieks from the courtyard. I stick my head out of the ventilation hole in our cell door and see the police bringing in five girls. One of them, a tall girl with a shaven head, is wriggling between the Adyghe twins and trying to pinch their cheeks. They duck their heads in embarrassment. A camera stands ready in the yard. The bald girl saunters over and stands in front of it, striking exaggeratedly glamorous poses. “Hey, you bastards, get a fucking move on, it’s cold out here!”
“Come on, Vera, stop pissing about,” says the police photographer.
“And what are you staring at?” she catches sight of me.
I pull my head back into the cell as my mates laugh. It hurts me to hear obscenities fall from the lips of such a young and pretty girl.
The girls have been arrested for picking up foreign sailors. The police threaten to tell their workplaces and schools of their ‘crimes.’ Those who show fear are blackmailed by the police for sexual favours; those who can’t produce documents are put in the women’s cell next to ours. It is never empty.
29
A Christian sect that had its roots in Catherine the Great’s reign. Followers led a nomadic life in the forests of Russia, refusing to co-operate in any way with the civil and ecclesiastical authorities.